


From the Floorboards to the Fly

by twoheadedenby



Category: Tsuritama
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, drama club au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-02-24 14:37:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2584949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoheadedenby/pseuds/twoheadedenby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuki Sanada is forced unexpectedly to confront his lifelong fear of public speaking and social situations when he is thrust against his will into his new school's drama club by an impulsive exchange student who claims to be an alien. With no budget, no rehearsal time and complications ranging from sudden script rewrites to government interference, it will take a miracle to make it to opening night. A Tsuritama AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This time, it happened on Enoshima

Yuki pressed his cheek flat against the window of the car and watched the fog his breath made on the window with idle disinterest. The moving process always left him feeling disgruntled. It wasn’t even the matter of leaving his old house or school behind; if anything it was exactly the opposite. The long car rides gave him altogether too much time to stew on how little it all meant to him. School was somewhere he listened and studied and prayed that we wouldn’t be called on to talk in class or by other students, and home was somewhere he ate and slept and passed the time with his grandmother, Kate. That was all he ever really did, and it was something he could do in a new town as well as he could in the old. With nothing to look forward to and nothing to miss, all he could do was mark the passage of the countryside. Kate sensed his disquiet from the driver’s seat, and the hours passed in silence.

They arrived at the new house in the early evening. It didn’t take long to move all of their possessions inside, and Yuki unpacked while his grandmother prepared a light dinner. Yuki finished first and went out to the backyard to have a look at his new surroundings.

The view was breathtaking. Flowers bloomed throughout the yard in a wide array of colours, but what caught Yuki’s eye was the ocean. The surf glowed in the evening sun, a mix of sparkling blue and warmer reflected hues. It stretched out as far as the eye could see, and the air was so clear that Yuki thought he could make out the curvature of the Earth along the horizon. He gazed out, rapt, and felt at peace.

His reverie was interrupted when Kate called out to let him know dinner was ready. They ate together and made conversation for the first extended length of time since the car trip had begun.

“What do you think of Enoshima?” asked Kate.

“It’s beautiful”, remarked Yuki. “You can see the ocean from almost anywhere!”

His grandmother smiled. “I’m glad you like it. Are you ready to go to school tomorrow?”

Yuki nodded. He didn’t have anything to add on the subject.

“You’re not the only new student there, you know,” Kate continued. “There’s a foreign exchange student starting tomorrow too. He’s going to be staying with us, so you should introduce yourself tomorrow.”

Yuki chewed his food and mulled the news over. He didn’t need a lot of space to himself, so he didn’t mind sharing accommodation with another student. He was worried about introducing himself, though. What if he embarrassed himself? What if he had to spend months living with someone who hated him from a bad first impression? Just thinking about it was mortifying. He realised he hasn’t replied to his grandmother.

“I’ll be sure to say hi,” he said, unsure of whether or not he’d even be able to follow through on that commitment. “What’s his name?”

“They tell me he’s called Haru,” Kate replied. “You’re in the same class, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to get to know each other.”

 _And plenty of opportunity to make a fool of myself,_ Yuki thought. He nodded again to his grandmother and excused himself, saying that he was worn out from travelling and wanted to get an early night.

He prepared himself for bed at a leisurely pace. Once he was settled under the covers, his mind flooded with a familiar mix of thoughts. The events of the day; his schedule for tomorrow; countless scripted mental conversations that he might be called on to engage in the next day. Questions, too: _What is my new school going to be like? What about this transfer student, Haru? Am I in for another boring, uneventful stay here in Enoshima?_ The thoughts chased each other around Yuki’s head until he fell uneasily into sleep.

\---

Yuki pressed his face to the surface of his desk, the wood cool against his burning cheeks. His class introduction had been a disaster, like always. He had spent the entire journey to school rehearsing his speech, like always. He had repeated it to himself over and over, worried that he was drawing attention to himself but determined to get it right this time, like he always was. And, like always, the moment he stood before the class and saw them lined up and staring expectantly at him, he had choked. Every carefully-chosen word deserted him and he found himself stammering and wilting under the stern and silent gaze of his class until the teacher took pity and told him to find his seat.

He had chosen a spot by the window to be able to look out over the ocean, which relaxed him and more importantly kept him from needing to meet the eyes of his classmates. He was watching the waves when a loud noise from the other end of the classroom made him jump in his seat (he hoped nobody saw). It was the sound of the classroom door swinging open sharply.

“Ah, this must be our other new transfer!” said the teacher over the murmur of the students.

Yuki studied the new kid from his seat. His hair and skin were pale, and his features were soft and rounded. He walked with an uneven swagger, letting his limbs carry him forward in fits and starts. Despite his flailing limbs, he walked almost perfectly straight and his centre of balance didn’t seem to shift. He stopped short on one leg and swung the other wide to face the class.

“I’m Haru!” the boy declared in a loud voice, “and I’m an alien!”

There was chatter and scattered laughter around the class. Yuki noted with some curiosity that Haru spoke perfect Japanese with no discernible accent. He didn’t have time to think on it long before Haru shocked him by pointing directly at him.

“There you are, Yuki!” he shouted, and Yuki felt his heartbeat speed up and his throat close as the entire class turned around to stare at him.

“Are the two of you already acquainted, Sanada?” the teacher asked.

Yuki threw his hands up as if in self-defense and stammered a response. “N-no, I don’t-”

“Yuki, Yuki, Yuki!” Haru was almost bouncing on the spot as he continued to shout Yuki’s name. He walked with a spring in his step to the seat in front of Yuki’s and parked himself in the chair, facing backwards. He spoke to Yuki directly now. “I’m Haru! We’re going to be living together!”

“My grandmother told me...” Yuki trailed off as he spoke, his words almost inaudible by the end of his sentence.

The rest of the school day passed without much incident. Yuki buried himself silently in his work while Haru teetered in his seat, swaying and humming to himself. When the rest of the class started filing out the door, Yuki stayed in his seat until the classroom was mostly clear. He didn’t want to appear to eager to leave, or to get in anybody’s way. Haru had stayed back too, and as Yuki stood to leave Haru fell in line behind him, matching his pace and babbling in rhythm with their footsteps.

Yuki was headed for the staircase when Haru seized his wrist and stopped both of them in their tracks.

“Where are you going?” he asked. His tone was inquisitive, not accusatory.

“...Home?” said Yuki, perplexed.

“Silly Yuki!” exclaimed Haru. He started off down the hall in the opposite direction, taking Yuki with him by the arm. “We have to get to the clubroom!”

“What clubroom?”

“Drama club!”

“I’m not part of any drama club...”

“Yes you are! I signed both of us up.”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Yuki stopped in his tracks, shaking his arm free of Haru’s grip. He felt panic setting in. “I don’t want to be in drama club! I don’t even know how to act!”

“Neither do I,” replied Haru. He seemed indifferent to Yuki’s growing distress. “Oh, well. It’s too late to back out now. They will have already started without us!”

He grabbed Yuki again, this time by the hand, and broke into a light run. Yuki sighed and matched his pace to prevent his arm being yanked off. He would just have to explain himself to the other club members when they got there.

Haru was right: the club was already in session when they made their entrance. He once again let the door swing unceremoniously open with a crash. The dozen or so club members were arranged standing in a circle, and every one of them stopped what they were doing to look at the pair of intruders. Yuki recognised a couple of faces from his class amongst them. He didn’t know any of their names.

“You must be Sanada and... Haru?” One of the students, a chubby boy with round glasses, stepped forward to greet them. If Haru had a surname, he had apparently not provided it on the sign-up sheet. Yuki realised then that Haru hadn’t provided one when he introduced himself, either.

“You came at a good time,” the boy continued. “Our director is absent today, so we’re just running practice exercises. Right now, each member of the group is required to recite the same line, then improvise a catchphrase of their own and strike a pose. Take a place in the circle and watch; I’m sure both of you will pick it up by the time it’s your turn.”

Haru and Yuki stepped forward and took their places, and the club resumed their exercise. A tall girl with her hair in a ponytail took a step forward and raised her hand with just the index finger out, pointing upwards.

“You could stop at five or six stores, or just one,” she said, then paused. “Can I ask you kind of a weird question?”

Yuki stared, transfixed as the girl jumped and twisted her body ninety degrees, landing with her fingers outstretched in the shape of guns. He couldn’t imagine doing the same thing without wanting to die from embarrassment, but everyone else in the group looked unfazed.

The exercise continued, with each student in turn putting their own spin on the material. Before long, it was Yuki’s turn and he stepped forward almost without thinking, then froze. He could feel his throat closing up, and the silence permeating the room was oppressive. He thought, over and over again about what he needed to say. It was just one line. Nearly impossible to get wrong. Everyone else had said it. It was no use; his tongue felt heavy and useless in his mouth and no sound escaped his throat. He could feel sweat beading at his temples, and the other students were starting to murmur to each other.

“Is he okay?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Why does he look so angry?”

Yuki’s cheeks burned, and he retreated sullenly from the circle. He was fortunate that Haru was up next, because the odd boy had all eyes on him as he leapt forward and delivered his own attempt with great volume and enthusiasm. Yuki wasn’t sure if it was a deliberate distraction or simply the latest in an already long line of wilful and inexplicable actions on Haru’s part, but he was grateful regardless.

After everyone had taken a turn, the circle split up and the group stood around, mostly engaged in idle conversation. It was evident that most of them knew each other fairly well. Yuki muttered an excuse and turned for the door. He didn’t want to stick around for another opportunity to embarrass himself. He was trudging down the hall for the exit when he heard a singsong voice behind him. Haru had followed him out.

“Yuki, the meeting isn’t over!”

“I’m not going back in there.” Yuki’s voice shook a little.

“You have to. You made a commitment.”

“ _You_ made the commitment! Not me!” Yuki snapped back.

“We’re both in the drama club and we’re going to be famous actors!” Haru was not, apparently, listening to a word of what Yuki was actually saying. He wanted to howl with frustration but he was acutely conscious of the fact that many students were still around at this time of day. He settled for a long sigh.

“I don’t want to humiliate myself again. I’m going home. “ Yuki started walking, determined not to stop again. To his surprise, Haru skipped lightly up beside him and walked with him.

“What are you doing?” He asked.

“If Yuki is going home then so am I,” he declared. Yuki shrugged in defeat.

\---

When they arrived home, Kate greeted them with a warm smile and asked if they’d had a good day. Haru nodded vigorously and recounted their brief adventure with the drama club. Kate listened intently.

“Yuki has never shown an interest in acting before,” she remarked when he had finished. “I’m glad you boys are broadening each others’ horizons.”

Yuki just nodded, feeling drained by the day’s events. He showed Haru to his room before retiring to his own, collapsing in an exhausted heap on the bed. He closed his eyes and the most embarrassing moments of the day played in a reel across his eyelids. He had no idea how he was going to get out of his commitment to the drama club. He wasn’t equipped to handle the challenges of acting with them. He felt stuck, and it was all because of that strange boy. Hadn’t he called himself an alien in front of the class? Was that a joke? Whether it was or not, his behaviour bore the claim out.

Whatever else was true, Yuki thought, this was not going to be a repeat of his last few moves. His time in Enoshima was destined to be memorable.


	2. Waiting for Coco

_What am I doing here again?_

Yuki sat with his chin resting on his hands against the wall of the drama clubroom. He hadn’t even put up a fight this time. He had taken to spending his afternoons with Haru. At first it was simply in lieu of anything else to do, but it had quickly become a ritual. Yuki felt comfortable in the other boy’s presence; Haru’s odd behaviour and constant chatter kept attention squarely on him most of the time, which saved Yuki a great deal of stress and embarrassment. He would be lying if he said that he didn’t find Haru a little magnetic himself, sometimes.

So it was that when Haru marched to the clubroom after class, Yuki ended up following him without a fight. As a result, they had arrived early this time. Yuki’s attitude attitude to the club in general had relaxed in the intervening days. He was still faintly horrified by the idea of acting on-stage, but he had decided that he would at least stick around to help out behind the scenes. He caught a smile creeping across his face as he watched Haru talk animatedly to the club members who were milling about the room.

“Not quite feeling the club spirit?”

A boy with shaggy black hair and glasses with thick rectangular frames had seated himself beside Yuki.

Yuki was startled. “Oh, no! I’m just, I’m not, I don’t like being the centre of attention.”

“I hate to break it to you,” said the boy, “but you may be in the wrong club for that.”

Yuki swallowed. He hadn’t meant to offend anyone with his unwillingness to participate. It hadn’t occurred to him that not wanting to stand out might make him stand out more in an environment like this. He could feel himself starting to sweat.

“...Are you okay? It was just a joke.” The boy raised an eyebrow at Yuki. “As a matter of fact,” he continued, “I don’t actually perform myself. I’m Natsuki Usami, in charge of sound, lighting and effects for the club.”

“Yuki Sanada.”

“Yeah, we’re in the same class. I’ve seen you around.” He paused. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

Yuki opened his mouth to apologise, then decided that would just make things weirder. Natsuki shrugged.

“So what brings you here, if not the allure of fame and fortune?”

“I came with him.” Yuki pointed in Haru’s direction.

“I see,” said Natsuki, nodding. “Your friend is... lively. He told me he was an alien.”

“He does that a lot,” said Yuki. He bit his lip and spent a moment concentrating hard on the right way to make conversation. “What about you?” he eventually asked. “Why are you a member if you don’t act?”

Natsuki shrugged again. “It’s something to do,” he said. “It keeps me busy and out of the house most afternoons. Besides, nobody else here knows how to operate the stage lights properly.”

Yuki couldn’t help but laugh in spite of his nerves.

“I looks like the meeting is starting now,” said Natsuki.

The other students were grabbing chairs and forming a seated circle, so Natsuki and Yuki got to their feet and followed suit. Yuki placed his chair beside Haru’s. When the other boy saw him he excitedly scooted his chair sideways to sit nearer to him.

Someone cleared their throat. Yuki recognised him as the boy who had welcomed them to the club last time. He gestured with his hands to get the group’s attention.

“The Culture Festival is now six months away,” he began, “which means that it’s time for us to choose a play to perform. As is club tradition the final decision rests in the hands of our director, but since she isn’t here today I thought we could at least get the ball rolling with some suggestions.”

The room filled with a thoughtful silence. Nobody seemed to want to go first.

“We could always do Romeo & Juliet,” suggested one student. It was met with a collective eye roll from at least half the group.

“I guess not.”

“I have an idea!” piped a voice. It was Haru’s. “Let’s perform _Peter Pan_!”

Yuki wasn’t sure if Haru had been biding his time or if it had been a pure spur-of-the-moment impulse. If he had to guess, he would have said the latter.

“ _Peter Pan_?” asked one of the club members. “The English play? Or the American broadway musical?”

“Both! Neither! It doesn’t matter!” declared Haru. He got to his feet and started pacing and gesticulating as he spoke. “I want to play Peter!”

Yuki wanted to shrink into his chair. His mind was flooding with second-hand embarrassment. He began to fear for his own social standing, too. Had he been spending too much time with Haru? Maybe people were starting to think about them as a unit, which would mean that his current antics reflected on both of them equally. The thought was mortifying. Yuki wanted to sink to the floor and crawl out the door. He could barely stand to listen to the things the other students were saying. Things like:

“Sounds like fun!”

“I don’t see why not.”

_Wait a second._ Was the club really going for it? Had Haru really worked his way into their good graces in such a short amount of time? Yuki cast his eyes around. Some of the faces in the circle were more surprised than others, but nobody seemed upset or outraged. Only Natsuki looked more than a little skeptical, and Yuki assumed from their talk earlier that Natsuki didn’t much care about the internal politics of the club.

It took a minute or two for the hubbub in the room to die down.

“Well then,” said the unofficial group chairman. “If there aren’t any objections, shall we suggest _Peter Pan_ to the director?”

The question was met only with small murmurs of approval and a couple of shrugs.

“I guess that settles it then,” said the boy. “Of course, it is still the director’s decision, but we’ll see what she has to say when she shows up.”

He checked his watch, clearly unsure of when exactly that might actually be. Haru, meanwhile, had returned to his seat and now turned to Yuki to speak. “Are you excited, Yuki?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess. Was _Peter Pan_ something you grew up with in...” Yuki paused. “Wherever you’re from? I don’t actually know wh-”

“I told you Yuki,” interrupted Haru. “I’m an alien.”

“Right. I hadn't forgotten, I just...” _Just what?_ Yuki realised then that he no longer really disbelieved Haru’s outlandish claim. “Never mind. So where did you learn the story then?”

“I’m not the first visitor to Earth,” Haru explained. “A lot of us get sent here growing up; to experience human culture and bring some of it back with us.”

“So that makes you... some kind of interplanetary tourist,” said Yuki, bemused.

“Sure!”

“So, why come to Enoshima of all places?”

“My sister came here first and I wanted to visit her. She made this island sound wonderful and she was right!”

_There are two of them?!_ Yuki gasped at the thought. He cleared his throat sheepishly.

“Now that I’m here I know my real purpose was to meet Yuki!” Haru continued, beaming. “And to star with him onstage!”

Yuki went red. “Oh, no,” he stammered. “I’m not going to actually appear in the-”

“You have to,” said Haru. “You have to be my Wendy.”

Yuki didn’t even know where to start with that suggestion, so he ended up blurting all of it out at once. “I don’t know how to act! Wendy is a girl! I don’t even want to be the star! That role should go to someone more qualified.”

_And_ , he thought with a note of bitterness, _I couldn’t act in front of other people even if I did want to_.

Haru shook his head and repeated himself: “You have to.”

“It’s not really up to either of us anyway,” said Yuki. “Casting is up to the director too, and there’s no way I’d make it past the audition stage.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” said Haru in a singsong voice.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded Yuki.

“You’ll see,” Haru replied, then turned away and started rocking in his chair.

_What was that supposed to mean?_ Yuki turned it over in his mind until he heard a door open behind him and Haru making excited noises beside him. He heard someone call out.

“Ah, miss director, you made it!”

Yuki turned to look over his shoulder. Standing in the doorway was a girl with garish shoulder-length hair; bright pink with oddly-shaped patches of green on either side. She grinned and waved to the group, striding casually and confidently towards the circle. She was wearing large round spectacles, and Yuki saw a familiar shade of purple irises behind them.

“Oh no...” he whispered under his breath. The girl stopped short and looked at him. His stomach tied itself in knots and he prayed that she hadn’t heard him.

“You must be Yuki,” she said, smiling. Yuki felt a little less tense, but the tension gave way to a looming sense of dread. The girl offered her hand. “I’m Coco.”

Then she said something that replaced Yuki’s dread with abject despair, smiling all the while:

“My brother has told me all about you!”


	3. Strutting and Fretting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I apologise for the months and months of no progress on this fic, life got complicated as it does and I found myself awfully short on time or motivation to write. I can't promise it's going to speed up again terribly soon but in the meantime here's one of the chapters I had set aside as a buffer to show this fic hasn't been abandoned.

“Sanada, you’re up.”

Yuki took a deep breath and buried his face in his hands. For a moment everything was dark, quiet. He took another breath before opening his eyes. He looked down at the sheaf of papers in his hands. It was a translated photocopy of the _Peter Pan_ script, complete with annotations in thick, rounded lines punctuated with small flowers and hearts. Many of them were printed, but yet more were penned on top of them in fresh ink. Some of them simply pointed to other annotations and read “DISREGARD THIS”.

The borderline-illegible mess represented the cumulative effort of a week’s discussion, rewriting and fine-tuning. Much of the play had been altered in order to better suit the limited resources at the club’s disposal. Further changes had been made to accomodate the change in setting, and others had been made according to the creative impulses of the club members.

The decision had been made to use the script of the 1954 stage musical as their basis. General consensus was that it was the more modern, populist version of the story, and that the addition of musical numbers would present a more wide-ranging display of the club’s talents to the audience.

Nobody present had been particularly familiar with any version of the story in more than the abstract. Translated versions of the original J.M. Barrie play had not been hard to come by, and served as the primary point of comparison for the 1954 version. Nobody had yet familiarised themselves with Barrie’s novelisation of the play beyond online plot summaries. Arrangements had been made to screen some of the screen treatments of the story should the opportunity arise, but none yet had.

(The club was lucky in this regard that the Great Ormond Street children’s hospital, to whom Barrie had given the rights to the story, were fiercely protective of their copyright. After a 1924 silent film supervised by Barrie himself, the hospital had allowed only two film adaptations of their property: a 1953 animated film by Walt Disney Animation Studios and a 2003 live-action film by Universal. There were also a pair of semi-official sequels: Steven Spielberg’s _Hook_ in 1991 and _Return To Never Land_ in 2002, Disney’s follow-up to their own animated film. Neither was deemed to be of immediate importance to the club’s goals and thus were afforded low priority.)

The creative mission statement of the project was to be theatrical magpies; cherrypicking elements of _Peter Pan_ s past and inventing others wholesale to present a version of the play that bore the unmistakeable personality of the club performing it.

The first major restructuring had come about as a unanimous decision: in the name of cultural sensitivity and general good taste, the characters of Princess Tiger Lily and her tribe had been excised entirely. This required much of the play’s second act to be reworked, but it had the twin benefits of making both the cast size and running time more manageable for a small group of amateurs, in addition to sidestepping thorny representational matters that a collective of adolescent Japanese theatre enthusiasts were not remotely equipped to handle.

The rewriting process was far from over, but enough initial planning had been done to formulate a more-or-less definitive cast list and the auditioning process was ready to begin. Hence the heavily annotated script now in Yuki’s trembling hands. Hence the growing knot in his stomach.

Haru had, of course, landed the role of Peter. It had not been an undemocratic process; he had auditioned like everybody else. Even with Coco abstaining to avoid charges of nepotism, there had been little disagreement that Haru was best-suited to the part. Certainly, he had boyish charm and an impish sense of mischief in spades, but Yuki was left wondering if what he was doing really constituted “acting” and not just a matter of Haru being Haru.

Haru had insisted, adamantly, that he would not take the role unless Yuki auditioned for the part of Wendy. Yuki had declined over and over, in an increasingly panicked manner.

“You can do it, Yuki!” they had said. “You’ll do fine! It won’t be that bad!”

_Yes,_ Yuki had thought. _It really, really will._ He knew they meant well, though, so he had said nothing. He really did appreciate their support, as far as it went. It was new and unusual for him to be surrounded by so much encouragement, and it meant quite a bit. Some problems were just insurmountable.

Yet here he was, palms sweating and gripping at the crumpled edges of the script, being called up to audition. A makeshift stage had been marked out on the floor in tape parallel to the wall. The club members sat opposite, many of them studying their own copies of the script. Coco was sitting beside the stage, legs crossed and her own copy of the script rolled into the shape of a makeshift megaphone in an attempt to look more (in her own words) “directorly”. Finally, Haru was standing on his mark, an X taped on the floor at one end of the stage.

Yuki rolled the script up in one hand and marched solemnly to his own mark. He scrunched his eyes shut and focused on keeping his breathing steady. When he opened them, he saw Haru waving enthusiastically at him from the other end of the stage. Coco leaned back in her chair and raised the paper cone to her lips. “Alright you two, take it from ‘Why are you crying?’”

Both boys nodded. Haru settled into a sitting position and began to make loud sniffling sounds. Yuki involuntarily felt a pang of concern for a moment before his brain registered what they were doing. He stepped closer to Haru, giving himself a mental pep-talk as he did.

_You know this. You read the script over and over. All you have to do is repeat it, word-for-word. Haru will do the same. No surprises. Nothing you can’t handle._

“Excuse me boy, why are you crying?” Yuki asked. His body felt like it was buzzing with the effort of remembering his line, the effort of delivering it right and above all the effort of hiding every ounce of effort that went into it.

Haru wiped his eyes, turned to Yuki, and asked “What’s your name?”

“Wendy Moira Angela Darling. What’s yours?” replied Yuki, feeling faintly ridiculous.

“Peter Pan.”

“Is that all?”

Haru bit his lip. “Yes.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it!” Haru chirped.

_That wasn’t the line in the script_. Everything started to fall apart in Yuki’s head. When the response from Haru that he had been anticipating failed to materialise, his own lines started to get jumbled in his mind. He froze, and every second he spent unable to come up with his line made it harder to think straight. He felt like the air was filling with the anticipation of everybody else in the room. He could think of nothing now but the expectations of everyone around him and how very much he was failing to meet them. Finally, he spoke.

“I... I can’t do this.” He hung his head, fists clenched and arms trembling. He stared fixedly at his feet, trying not to pay attention to the sounds of the rest of the club talking amongst themselves. He screwed the script in his hand even tighter. His thoughts were jumping between hollow consolation that he didn’t have to embarrass himself like this again and total, overwhelming frustration for screwing up.

He stood there unwilling to move. He could hear chairs moving and commotion going on around him and he didn’t want to see or think about any of it. He stiffened and nearly jumped when he felt a hand grip his shoulder.

“Yuki?”

The voice belonged to Haru. Yuki reached his hand up to his shoulder instinctively and then flinched away when his fingertips touched Haru’s. He opened his eyes and spun around on the spot. Haru was standing immediately in front of his face, well inside his personal space. Upon scanning around, he realised that only Haru and Coco were still in the room.

“Where did everybody go? Are auditions over?” asked Yuki.

“I asked them to go practice out in the hall,” said Haru, nonchalantly.

“Why?”

“You were having trouble auditioning in front of them.” replied Haru, with a look that suggested this should have been obvious.

“Well... yeah,” said Yuki. “That’s true. But why did you send them out?”

“So you can try again, of course.”

“Try again? You want to keep going after what just happened?”

Haru nodded firmly.

Yuki was taken aback. “Is my audition really that important to you?”

Haru nodded again. Yuki slumped his shoulders in defeat and said, “Alright, let’s take it from the top.”

Coco cheered from her seat. He could never bring himself to say it, but Yuki was touched by their support. It was perhaps more a reflection of himself than of them, but this was a wholly new experience for him. He’d never had friends willing to treat him with patience and consideration like this. He was grateful.

Haru flashed him a grin and took his original position once more. They ran through the scene as before. Haru continued to play fast and loose with the letter of the script, but Yuki was able to keep his own lines at the forefront of his mind. (He did not, however, go so far as to venture his own ad libs).

“Where do you live?” asked Yuki.

“Second to the right and straight on ‘til morning,” replied Haru.

“What a funny address!”

“I don’t think so.”

“I mean, is that what they put on the letters?”

“I don’t get any.”

“But your mother gets letters?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Peter!” with this exclamation, Yuki ran to embrace Haru, as dictated by the script. Haru danced away.

“You mustn’t touch me,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

Haru had skipped a line. Yuki adjusted, and jumped ahead too. “No wonder you were crying.”

“I wasn’t! But I can’t get my shadow to stick on.”

“Oh, how awful. But Peter, you’ve been trying to stick it on with soap!”

“What was I _supposed_ to do?” snapped Haru.

“It must be sewn on,” explained Yuki.

“What’s ‘sewn’?”

“You are dreadfully ignorant.”

“No I’m not!”

“I will sew it on for you. Sit here. I daresay it will hurt a little.”

Haru turned his back and Yuki pantomimed the act of sewing as best he could. It wasn’t exactly something he had a lot of experience with.

Haru spun around and struck a pose. “Wendy, look; oh the cleverness of me!”

“You conceited boy,” said Yuki. “Of course I did nothing!”

“You did a little.”

“A little! If I’m no use then I can withdraw.” Yuki turned to leave.

At this point in the play came Peter’s first musical number, “I’ve Gotta Crow”. The early rehearsals were concerned only with line readings and thus the boys jumped ahead. Yuki had made a mental bookmark in the script. His next line was...

He gritted his teeth while his back was still turned in an attempt to keep himself from putting his head in his hands. He swallowed his pride, turned to Haru, and said “I shall give you a kiss, if you like.”

“Thank you,” said Haru, holding out his hand.

“Don’t you know what a kiss is?”

“I’ll know when you give it to me, won’t I?”

Haru stretched out his own hand. In the script, Wendy presents Peter with the thimble from her thumb. For now, Yuki sufficed by brushing his fingers over the palm of Haru’s outstretched hand.

“And shall I give you one in return?” said Haru.

“If you please.”

“Cut!” Coco’s voice rang out.

“What do you think?” asked Haru.

“Well,” said Coco. “I think we have our Wendy.”

“Really?” asked Yuki. He was surprised and proud enough that he forgot, momentarily, that he didn’t _want_ to play Wendy.

“I’ll go tell the club!” said Haru with great enthusiasm. He ran for the door.

Coco clapped a hand on Yuki’s shoulder and said, “You show a lot of promise. That blush at the end was a nice touch.”

“Heh, yeah. I mean, thank you. Of course.” He hadn’t the heart to tell her that the blush had not been intentional. It was then that Haru re-entered the room, leading the rest of the club as if at the head of a procession. Each in turn smiled at Yuki as they entered and offered him words of congratulation or encouragement. He’d be lying if he said it wasn’t a little overwhelming, but he’d be lying even more if he said he wasn’t enjoying it.

Attention was drawn away from Yuki when the clubroom door opened once more. In the doorway stood a tall stranger. He was clad in full uniform, despite looking far to old to be a student. His skin was a dark tan and his head was wrapped in a white turban. More unusual still, a large white duck sat perched upon his shoulder.

“My name is Akira Agarkar Yamada,” he said in a deep voice. “I hope I’m not too late to audition.”

 


End file.
